


The Gift

by cecilkirk



Category: Bandom, Cobra Starship, Fall Out Boy, My Chemical Romance, Panic! at the Disco, The Academy Is...
Genre: F/M, Happy Ending, M/M, RomCom AU, Ryden, this is basically like a hallmark movie
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-20
Updated: 2016-04-21
Packaged: 2018-06-03 08:40:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,613
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6604246
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cecilkirk/pseuds/cecilkirk
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Brendon had a knack for matchmaking--everyone he set up together fell in love and lasted for life. Nevermind that he hadn't found anyone for himself, though. And nevermind that he's found the only person he has yet to find a match for.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

“I’m in love.”

“You’re delusional.”

“Well, so what if I am?” Spencer replies. “It’s worth it to be this much in love.”

Ryan rolls his eyes, drumming his thumbs on the steering wheel. “You’ve been together for three weeks, Spence.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Spencer says. He looks out the passenger side window wistfully, staring up at the moon. “I only needed a week to know.”

Ryan scoffs. Spencer’s head whips around to glare at him.

“I know you’re just a jaded and bitter old man and all,” Spencer spits, “but can’t you just be happy for me?”

Ryan spares him an apologetic glance. He hadn’t meant to anger Spencer. “Yeah, sorry,” he offers softly.

Spencer accepts it silently, and he’s quick to look back out the window again. After a moment of silence, Spencer says, “You know, if you found someone, you’d believe me.”

“I’ve dated lots of people, Spence,” Ryan says. “If I were meant for love, I think I would’ve found it by now.”

He doesn’t mean it sadly, but it comes out as so. Ryan is struck with the realization that he really does think he might end up alone. He had never voiced the worry before. It seeped deep into his chest, dragging down his mood. He hands stopped moving; he tightened them around the steering wheel, focusing on the slick void of road in front of him.

“Maybe you just need a shove in the right direction,” Spencer quips.

Ryan raises an eyebrow at him, and something like hope begins to stir within him. “What?”

Spencer grins slyly, plan behind his eyes. “I know someone who can help you out.”

Ryan sighs in exasperation. “I swear to god, if you make me call another over-the-phone psychic, I’ll--”

“No, nothing like that,” Spencer laughs. “He’s the real deal. He lead me to Linda, after all.”

Ryan says nothing. If it’s hope growing inside him, it’s only growing larger. There was a huge possibility whoever Spencer had in mind could do nothing for him, only reinforcing that Ryan was going to be alone forever, that he wasn’t meant for love.

That was the most likely thing to happen. Virtually inevitable. But there was some slight possibility of an alternate ending--one with happiness. One with love.

One that would make him look a lot like Spencer did right now.

“And what was so bad about the psychic?” Spencer asks.

Ryan blinks away his thoughts, loosening his grip on the wheel. “I paid a dollar a minute to be told I will die at the end of my life,” he reminds Spencer.

Spencer snorts, and it drags out a short burst of laughter from Ryan.

 

 

 

 

Brendon had a gift. He didn’t know where it came from or why he had it, but it was there, and it was real: he knew who people’s soulmates were.

After twenty years of honing the talent, he’d come to realize some facts. One was that he had to know both the people in some way, even if he had only saw them briefly--passing by at the mall, on the road, and, once, by mail. He wasn’t sure how that had ended up, but he hoped his high school calculus teacher was happy. Maybe she’d even afforded moving to Australia, too. 

Another rule was that he was never, ever wrong. It was more of a fact than a rule, but it was true either way--anyone Brendon had ever set up together stayed together for life. (Well, his calc teacher might be the exception, but that was the only time he’d encouraged people to converse by snail mail.) He didn’t need to be worried about who he found compatible. He knew it would all work out in the end.

And, most importantly, it was a good party trick. Well, okay, that wasn’t the most important, but the reasoning behind it was: Brendon only needed to meet people briefly to find their soulmates. This was, at first, extremely overwhelming for Brendon, especially when he was a teenager trying to soothe the broken hearts of friends. But he quickly learned that matchmaking was easier when half the solution was in front of you, and so he began to set up friends. After a few middle school blunders as he learned how to hone his talent, he became flawless at it. He had set up friend after friend, friends’ parents, and even a few teachers. But most of the remaining halves of the solutions were already peers or friends. That was all well and good for them and convenient for Brendon, but it was boring. 

When it took searching, that’s when it became fun.

Like with William, for instance.

“This, uh,” William fell silent. His eyes widened at the stripper making her way toward him on stage, smiling suggestively. “This isn’t my kind of...scene, Bren.”

Brendon handed William a dollar, gesturing with a raised eyebrow at what William should do with it. Even with the dim lights, Brendon was sure William was blushing.

“Trust me, Beckett,” Brendon laughed. “I know what I’m doing.”

And he did, really. He knew that William felt nothing but confusion with the stripper onstage. He knew that it was his job to encourage William to look toward the bar, eventually, to find the man sitting at it, staring sadly into his whiskey, perhaps, or looking at the stage with apathy and a wonderfully cliched woe-is-me despondency. Brendon had known instantly when the man had come into work that he was right for William, and by syllogism alone figured the man was the kind to visit the strip club often. Beyond his gift, he was skilled at reading people. The two talents were impeccably complementary.

Out of the corner of his eye, he catches William fleeing to the bar in search of refuge from the world of glittery heterosexuality. Brendon half-smiled to himself. Sometimes his help wasn’t always necessary. Sometimes things just fell into place because they were meant to be.


	2. Chapter 2

“I’m telling you, man. He’s done it again.”

Ryan opens his mouth to offer disbelief, but Spencer stops him, pointing a drumstick at him to keep him from talking back.

“Seriously,” he says. “When Bill came to work today, he was just  _ beaming _ . He’s never happy at work.” 

Ryan raises and eyebrow. Spencer gives a half-shrug of admittance. 

“Okay, none of us are happy at Dick’s, but he, like, is the most not-happy of us there, and he couldn’t stop smiling yesterday.”

“Sounds obnoxious,” Ryan says. He plucks aimlessly at his acoustic guitar, clamping fingers on the neck so now sound is released into the world.

“It was,” Spencer concedes, tapping on the rim of his practice pad. “But, for real, Ry. Bill is the happiest I’ve ever seen him. He wouldn’t shut up about last night.”

“Bill is a hopeless romantic,” Ryan reminds him. “He falls in love every other week.”

“Okay, yeah,” Spencer admits again, “but this is different.”

Ryan stops plucking. “I’m sure.”

“Why won’t you just give him a try?” Spencer implores. “He’s impossibly good at it.”

“Not worth the time,” Ryan mutters. He sets down his guitar, frustrated. The song wasn’t coming together. Nothing was going right for him today.

“Your happiness is worth any amount of time,” Spencer says.

_ Not if you don’t care about it. _

“Not feeling it right now, okay, Spence?” Ryan explains. “I don’t want to go through the headache.”  _ And the inevitable heartbreak and months-long plagues of depression that’ll follow. _

Spencer adopts a tone of frustration to match Ryan’s. “Why won’t you fight for your happiness?”

Ryan bites his tongue for a moment before offering, “Maybe I’m content just how I am right now.”

“That’s just it--you’re content,” Spencer says, coming over to sit next to Ryan on the couch. “You’re not happy and joyous and ecstatic and--”

“Well, Christ, Spence, ever consider I’m not like that?” Ryan snaps.

Spencer says nothing but scoots away from Ryan. Ryan sighs. He knows Spencer will never understand, no matter how much he wants to. 

“You could be,” Spencer says finally. 

Ryan wants to believe him. Common sense and personal history tell him otherwise.

 

 

 

The dim, warm lighting of their home surrounds them. Brendon looks at her shyly through his eyelashes, and she smirks back coquettishly. He blushes; she blushes. He begins to sing, using the broom in his hands as a mic to serenade her. 

She can no longer stop herself from laughing.

“Oh my--oh my god,” she chokes out through loud bursts of giggling. “That was literally the gayest thing I’ve ever seen.”

Brendon clicks his tongue, dropping his broom loudly on the tile floor. “How rude.”

Sarah catches his mock-serious countenance and can’t suppress another burst of laughter.

“I did go to a strip club last night, if you didn’t remember,” he supplies.

“Oh yes, of course,” she says, pouring herself a glass of wine from the bottle on the kitchen counter. “Trying to up your score again, correct?”

Brendon takes her glass, ignoring her middle finger. “My score?”

“Your number of perfect matches,” she explains through a laugh. “You wouldn’t go to a strip club without some kind of ulterior motive,” she says. She fills a coffee mug with wine and sits on a stool at the counter. “And you have yet to tell me how that went.”

Brendon kicks away the broom dramatically and plants himself across from her at the bar, sitting on a stool identical to hers. She remains standing at the bar, chin in the hand not around the mug, elbow on the counter.

She eagerly awaits his story. He is eager to tell it.


End file.
